Kathy's Pit Stop

Is coverage getting worse?

First, congrats to Biffle for the win.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the coverage is getting worse, if you're not running in the top ten or one of the commentators picks for the race, it's hard to get information on what's going on with drivers throughout the race, unless they wreck.

Take Newman for example, he was running near the front, not up front, when he had to pit early for a tire going down.  That was mentioned and then he was caught a lap down when caution came out due to that early green flag stop.  Then even mentioned it when he got the lap back, after that was when it became confusing.  I noticed by running order he was still running near the tail of the field, they mentioned an overheating problem, OK.  Next thing I know, he's even further down, getting his lap back again, I don't remember a mention of why he was a lap down again though.  I read this morning that he got a speeding penalty on pit road, which put him a lap down, that makes sense.

Yes, I may be complaining about them not covering Newman, but what about all the others that weren't mentioned?  What about their fans?  How much was mentioned about Jeff Burton, Dale Jarrett, Bobby Labonte, Jeremy Mayfield, etc?  It's not fair to their fans to not cover their drivers, just because they aren't running up front.  Why not do a through the field, every once in a while to cover where the other drivers are and what their problems may be?

This 'n' that

After Mark Martin's win at California yesterday, it was brought up in the comment section about how much the Cup drivers are taking away from the regular Busch Series guys, as far as winnings and points.  It's true, they did take quite a bit in yesterday's race. 

So, I'll bring up something that I brought up in my old blog a while ago.  Should the Cup drivers be allowed to race in the Busch Series and if so, under what conditions? 

One of my suggestions was that they had to run the full season or a certain amount of races in the Busch Series, but then you run into the problem of how many races is the right number.  What about the ones that are driving full-time in both series, should they not be allowed just because they drive full-time in the Cup series too? 

Some say it's not fair to the regular Busch Series guys and some say it's good for them.  One side has it where they're saying that they have no chance against the big bucks teams driven by the the Cup guys and then you have the others saying how great it would be for a driver to say he beat Mark Martin or Kevin Harvick in a race.  Then what about the truck series?  It doesn't happen nearly as much as in the Busch Series, but Cup drivers have driven in the truck races too.

So, what do you think?  Should they keep it the way it is now or change it?

Park wins

Steve Park won the truck race at California, making him the tenth driver to win in all three of NASCAR's top three series (Cup, Busch & Truck).  The race itself, wasn't that exciting, at least not as exciting as the truck races go.  It almost seemed like if the commentators talked about you, that you'd better watch out.  They were talking about how well David Starr was doing and how he had the dominant truck and then he wrecked.  Under the last caution of the race, everyone was wondering why Mike Bliss didn't pit, according to reports, they were only two laps short and a few more caution laps would help them make it to the finish, so they didn't want to give up first.  Mike Bliss was filling in for Sprague who got hurt on Wednesday in an incident at home.  Well, their calculations were a bit off, with six to go, Bliss ran out of fuel and that put Park in the lead with Hamilton trying to close in.  Hamilton was never able to catch him and Park because the tenth driver to win in all three of NASCAR's top series.  Ricky Craven finished third, Todd Kluever fourth and Musgrave finished fifth.

Crown Prince? I think not.

This probably won't go over too well with the Gordon fans, but it is my opinion.

Yes, Jeff Gordon just won the Daytona 500 for the third time, he's got four championships, many, many wins (not sure of the exact number) and he'll probably have many more.  He's a good driver, I've never said he wasn't, but for this article to call him NASCAR's Crown Prince is a bit silly to me.  Say you think he's a great driver or whatever, but to give him a royal-like title is a bit much.

I have no doubt that Gordon will go down in NASCAR history as one of the greatest drivers, but he's not NASCAR's Crown Prince.

Pit road speeding

It was mentioned that about eleven cars were penalized for speeding on pit road during pit stops.  That's a number that's a lot higher than we've seen in the past and could be an indication of just how many actually got away with it in the past.  But, no more with the electronic timing.

I had always questioned when NASCAR would penalize one car for speeding on pit road and not the other car that was running right with them, either right behind them or right beside them.  I've seen to where two cars were racing side by side on pit road and NASCAR nail one for speeding and not the other one, it made no sense.  Some fans would cry favoritism and think NASCAR would just look the other way with some drivers, if they did that, they can't do that anymore.

A couple of big names got penalized for speeding, Kurt Busch and Jimmie Johnson, it didn't hurt either of them when it came down to the checkered flag, but it could have.  I was surprised that Rusty's name never came up with speeding down pit road, he's been nailed in the past by NASCAR many times, I'm glad he wasn't one of the ones penalized.

I still think they need to put speedometers or something in the car so the drivers know their speed, going by rpm's just isn't enough and Sunday's race proved that.  I'm not against the new way of timing pit road speeds, but they do need to help the drivers a bit if they're going to make it cut and dry like that. 

Rusty Wallace inducted at Daytona

Rusty Wallace was inducted into the Goodyear Legends of Daytona in the Fanzone area on Saturday morning.  Even though Rusty has never won a points race at Daytona, I'm glad they decided to do this.  No matter if you're a fan or not, you have to admit that he has had a great career in NASCAR and is considered to be one of NASCAR's greatest.

A quote from Rusty later that morning...

"I was having a tough time up there on stage, they were laying out my stats and all the things I've done. I'm glad I had on my sunglasses because my eyes filled up after all that."

All I have to say is Way to go Rusty!

Quote taken from article at http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Speed/Headlines/03SpeedNEXT09022005.htm

Daytona 500

Jeff Gordon won the 500.  It was the second green, white, checkered this weekend at Daytona.  Even though there were a lot of cautions, the race seemed pretty much uneventful until it neared the end.  Wimmer took one heck of a ride in that 22 car on lap 184 and he was able to walk to ambulance and appeared to be OK.

Mark and Rusty put up a good fight trying for their last chance at the Daytona 500, they seemed to work well together throughout the day and stayed near the top.  During the final laps when all the slicing and dicing started happening, they got split up.  Mark finished sixth and Rusty finished tenth, while I wished one of them could have won it, at least they both made it through all the wrecks and finished the race.

Newman was doing good until being blocked in his pits during a caution.  If that wasn't bad enough, someone must have missed a shift or something and caused a backup on the restart after that caution and Newman got damaged.  If it wasn't for that, he would have had a much better finish.

Lastly, I want to say that Matthew McConaughey did GREAT in giving the command to start engines.  I had my doubts about how well he would do, but they can invite him back anytime to give the command.

Stewart gets his first Busch Series win

What an ending!  I thought that Jr. was going to win with Truex right behind him, but Harvick and Stewart took their shot at winning.  As Harvick said, he couldn't wait for Sorrenson to move anymore, he had to make a move and he did.  Next thing you know Tony is coming around the outside of Harvick to try and take the lead.  Harvick pushed Tony to the lead and then did some serious blocking, a wreck did happen further back in the field and Tony was credited with the win because they had taken the white flag.  Who would have thought that Tony would win after his ride through the grass?!

I have to say that the young guys of the series held on and did pretty well, should be interesting how they do for the rest of the season.

I can't wait until tomorrow!

Wild Truck Race

The opening race of the truck series was a wild one with lots of slicing and dicing, wrecks, flips and a green, white, checkered finish.

After the beginning of the race, the trucks basically split up into two packs, the front pack racing hard, two and three wide and the back pack basically nose to tail, they were trying to stay out of trouble.  With the front pack racing so hard, there was a lot of beating and banging, leading to some wrecks.

Both Rick Crawford and Chad Chaffin went for wild rides that took them out of the race, but could have been much worse than they were, both went airborne in two separate accidents, hurting their trucks, but they were ok.  The interesting thing about it, was that we were watching from an on-board camera from the truck next to them when both wrecks/flips happened, to see the tail end of a truck lift up like that from that angle was interesting.

I think there is something NASCAR needs to look into though, with Chad Chaffin's flip, while watching it happen, I noticed that the roof flap never deployed on his truck.  Crawford's did deploy, but it didn't stop him from going airborne.

Ted Musgrave got lucky, he went a lap down because of a tire problem and when the caution came out with 10 to go, he got his lap back and was able to battle back from 19th to finish 5th.

With the green, white, checkered finish, we all had to wait and see the results, caution came out and they had to see who was in the lead when the caution came out, Hamilton or Spencer.  Both thought they won the race, but Hamilton eventually got the nod from the NASCAR officials that he won after reviewing the video tapes of the race.  After reviewing the tapes, I agree with their call, but I do have a problem with the fact that the officials pointed Spencer to Victory Lane before they had a clear cut winner and knew they were reviewing it.  They should have had him park it on pit road until they made their decision, instead, he sat in Victory Lane waiting for the call and had to leave.  They never should have pointed him to Victory Lane, which the NASCAR officials did if they were still reviewing or going to review the tapes.

On another note.  Mark Martin won the IROC race at Daytona.  With that win, Mark Martin is now the winningest driver in IROC history.

Grr! Why Harvick!?

What was Harvick thinking?  I'm one of those that usually defends Harvick for on-track incidents, but not this time.  Right now, everyone is mad at Harvick, Nemechek even calling him an idiot.  Harvick said Johnson let up and that's why he ended up turning him around, Johnson said differently and even said that Childress should fire Harvick.

Unfortunately, both Rusty and Mark were caught up in the wreck.  Both were ok, physically, but upset.  Mark said their backup car couldn't win the Daytona 500, this car could have, he was very upset.  Rusty said they have a different setup in the backup car and it was tighter than this one that got wrecked.  He took a real hard hit, first he ended up hitting Harvick as Harvick was coming across the track, as if that wasn't bad enough, he got slammed from behind from someone and it lifted the car up of the track.

So, both Rusty and Mark will have to start from the back of the field in backup cars.  Let's hope they can get those cars just as good and race to the front.

*Picture credit - NASCAR.com